Back-Up: 5 steps to switch

5 steps to water-based printing inks:
How to make the shift

At Follmann, we guide companies through this process, which usually only takes two to three weeks. Find out now how you too can effort­lessly switch to more envir­on­ment­ally friendly printing inks:

Are you looking for new printing inks or are you looking for a new, reli­able supplier? We will advise you in detail and discuss with you how you can use water-based printing inks in your print shop.

You choose the colour, order and we deliver. We manu­fac­ture all our products exclus­ively at our German produc­tion site in Minden. The advantage for you: fast, reli­able delivery.

New machine or printing with existing machines? Here’s what you need to know:

  • New printing ink does not auto­mat­ic­ally mean new printing presses. A machine on which you previ­ously worked with solvent-based inks can also be converted: You can then also use machines from your inventory with water-based inks. Whether a new or used printing press — you should pay atten­tion to the following:

Drying of the colour film

  • Provide a suffi­cient volume of air (adapted to the selected printing speed).
  • The air must be dry.
  • The air must no longer be charged with solvent vapours.
  • For inter­me­diate drying with a central cylinder press, you must adjust the air outlet speed, temper­ature, volume and impact angle of the air to the ink film.

Colour Routing

  • Important: Ink-carrying parts must not be made of aluminium or copper. Use ink containers, pipes and hoses that are suit­able for contact with water-based printing inks.
  • Water-based inks can foam during the printing process: to prevent this, the pumps should be adjusted accord­ingly.
  • Do you already have a viscosity control system? This can also be used for water-based inks after appro­priate adjust­ment. Make sure you have a water connec­tion.
  • You will also need to make adjust­ments to the chambered doctor blade. Select the appro­priate doctor blades and seals. Follow the recom­mend­a­tions of the machine manu­fac­turer.

Adapt the cleaning of the colour-carrying parts: We offer a cleaner adapted to our colour system for this purpose.

For printing standard print motifs, we distin­guish between 4 categories with different require­ments for the anilox rollers:

Screened halftones:

  • Screen rulings up to 80 lines/cm
  • Amplitude and frequency modu­lated anilox tech­no­logy
  • Anilox rollers with a theor­et­ical transfer volume of 3.8 to 4.4 g/m² wet, from 240 lines/cm to 560 lines/cm

Fine line: anilox rollers with a theor­et­ical transfer volume of 8.5 g/m² to 11 g/² wet, from 160 lines/cm to 250 lines/cm

Solid coating (surfaces): Anilox rollers with a theor­et­ical transfer volume of 10 g/m² wet, from 120 lines/cm to 200 lines/cm

White and varnish: Anilox rollers with a theor­et­ical transfer volume of 12 g/m² wet, from 120 lines/cm to 140 lines/cm²

It’s not just the printing presses that you can rely on: Existing printing plates can also be used with water-based inks.

  • Pay atten­tion to the quality of the printing plate. Depending on the quality, the print result with water-based inks may differ from the result with solvent-based inks.
  • Coordinate the plate quality, base and anilox roller for optimum results.
  • Configure the best system with a finger­print: this allows you to determine the print char­ac­ter­istic curve in halftone and thus achieve ideal repro­duc­tion.
  • Modi­fic­a­tions to the plate surface during surface printing (micro­screening) enable excel­lent colour transfer with closed areas.

Wir sorgen dafür, dass sich Ihre Farben auf Wasserbasis nicht von Ihrem Muster unter­scheiden. Sie geben uns Nass­muster der einge­set­zten Konzen­trate, Auflack­binder und Verschnitte sowie Ihre Best­and­srezep­turen in beis­piels­weise einer Excelta­belle. Daraus erstellen wir anschließend in diesen Schritten RTU-Farbrezep­turen:

  1. Adjust base concen­trates with Foll­mann’s water-based concen­trates
  2. Calcu­late the required waste and water content for the appro­priate viscosity
  3. Create compar­ative sand prints with the adjusted recipes to determine the quality and make correc­tions if neces­sary
  4. Correct anilox roller, printing plate and base settings
  5. Save existing recipe data­base as offline data backup

We then feed the newly determ­ined recipes into your system – you can now produce orders with water-based printing inks.

In printing houses that use solvent-based inks, there is a strong smell of the vapours emitted. But it’s not just the odour that is unpleasant. The solvent vapours irritate the skin, respir­atory tract and eyes. These health risks exist for your employees who are exposed to the vapours on a daily basis:

  • Respir­atory diseases
  • head­aches
  • dizzi­ness
  • Drowsi­ness
  • Organ damage

Solvents are also highly flam­mable and there­fore dangerous to handle. You can avoid these health and safety risks with water-based printing inks.

We support you and your employees:

You can print on any machine with water-based inks. The adjust­ments described below are essen­tial before you start printing:

  1. Drying
  2. Ink feed
  3. Printing plate
  4. Anilox roller
  5. Viscosity settings

Don’t worry: we are on site. With our exper­i­enced team.

We agree a changeover plan with you and your employees. During the changeover, we support them, are avail­able to answer ques­tions and monitor whether everything is running smoothly.

Our support does not end with the successful changeover. We will remain at your side to ensure that you are optim­ally supported even after the imple­ment­a­tion of our water-based printing inks. If you have any ques­tions, concerns or need further advice, please feel free to contact our team at any time. Our applic­a­tion engin­eers are at your disposal and are willing to visit you in person if neces­sary to find solu­tions together. Your satis­fac­tion is important to us and we endeavour to provide you with the best possible service at all times.